Category Archives: Education

Freire and the Truman Show

Posted on March 28, 2015 by | 1 comment

While reading Paulo Freire’s, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, I couldn’t help but relate his depiction of the narrative style of education to the life of Jim Carrey’s character, Truman Burbank, in the satirical film, The Truman Show.  Continue reading →

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Posted in Contemporary Philosophy, Education, Experience, Identity, Knowledge, Perception, Pop Culture

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Rousseau on Politeness

Posted on March 23, 2015 by | 3 comments

There is a quote by Fred Astaire that has to do with parenting and that also ties into the Emile readings that we’ve had. He said, “The hardest jobs kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.” Now, I personally agree with this statement. Having good manners means that you treat others as well as yourself with respect. There are many things in the world today that are constantly in childrens’ lives that affect their manners. It could be a television show that they saw their parents watching, or it could be one of their friends that always gets their way, or it could be a video game that has disrespectful characters. Children learn from these things/people that are constantly in their life.

In Emile, Rousseau distinguishes the rich from the poor, saying that, “The artificial education of the rich never fails to make them politely imperious, by teaching them the words to use so that no one will dare to resist them.” (Pg. 68) Rousseau is rejecting politeness, which is a central part of having manners. He believes that havng a different social status from one person can make you polite but also “fake”, so it is not something that people should teach their children about. He believes that children should be taught on how to “preserve” their life, and that adults should not try to keep preserving them. (pg. 42). Basically, what he believes is that children should be taught how to do things for themselves, and that adults should have a hands-off method in teaching them, letting them explore and do what they want until they reach a consequence.

Now, I don’t agree with Rousseau and his rejection of teaching politeness because I personally think that learning how to be polite, or to be respectful, especially in certain situations, can help people a lot in life. However, he is correct to an extent. Teaching your children how to be polite is not always the most important thing, because politeness can be faked. I do believe that teaching your children how to preserve their life and do things for themselves takes precedence over teaching them how to be polite, but I don’t think that Rousseau should completely write politeness out of the books. What do you guys think? Should we even be polite anymore?

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Posted in Education, Knowledge, Perception

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Dewey Education System

Posted on March 23, 2015 by | 4 comments

In Dewey’s book Experience and Education, he attacks “traditional” and “progressive” education systems as being too restrictive and too relaxed respectively and enlightens the audience about experiential learning. Under experiment based learning, students learn by performing actions and forming hypotheses and testing them. He understands that not all experiences are beneficial, in that “any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience” (25). This statement could be interpreted in a few different way. One example of a bad experience is giving children too much freedom in the playground which results in them carelessly injuring their bodies in a way that could traumatize them or result in a permanent defect. Dewey explains his two criteria for effective growth of experience, in that it requires continuity (every experience will have a positive or negative influence) and interaction (how you handle current experiences is based on experiences from the past).

On the topic of experience based learning, I wonder how this system would work for the different subjects that I am taking right now. For example, how would calculus be taught as an experiential class? On some topics I can understand how hands–on experience would benefit my education, such as visually modeling the calculation of the volume of an irregular solid, however, some things taught in calculus are too theoretical to be experienced, such as deriving trigonometric derivatives. Likewise, some sections of this philosophy class can be experienced (a simulation of Plato’s education system in The Republic) while others have much more difficulty in delivering an experience (such as answering identity questions formulated by Kant).

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Posted in Contemporary Philosophy, Education

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Emotions in Education

Posted on March 23, 2015 by | 3 comments

It is plausible to say that each of us has once read educational materials which are not aligned with our interest. I recently came across an article about educational technology, classifying this problem as an “emotional” problem. Continue reading →

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What is Perfect Education?

Posted on March 23, 2015 by | 3 comments

As I was reading John Dewey’s Experience and Education, I kept on reflecting on our very first class at the beginning of the semester. If I remember correctly, we were all asked a very simple question: what is education? There is no point in finding the perfect model for education if its very purpose is unknown. Dewey rejects the idea that education is merely the young’s’ preparation for their future lives. To me, education is instilling in the young the urge to learn, change, and innovate.

The two conventional education models (traditional and progressive education) have failed to live up to that purpose. Dewey does an amazing job at pointing out the fallacies present in both models. In the traditional model, adults’ standards and methods are imposed on the students that do not correspond to their capacities. As a result, the concepts and ideas taught are abstract with little to no application on a student’s life. On the other hand, the progressive model offers little organization and unguided freedom. This can create a lot of “miseducative” experiences.

Due to the inherent fallacies present in both models, students must find the perfect balance between organized learning and practical experience. Because students have different capabilities and interests, the quest for the perfect balance should be a personal one. For me, I have found the perfect balance here at Emory. I run chemical reactions in lab after learning them in my organic chemistry class; I have connected the knowledge I gained in physics class with my neuroscience seminar to write a research paper on how physics is changing the field of neuroscience. I have also used my physics knowledge to better understand some problems we discussed in philosophy class. School is no longer about memorizing abstract non-applicable concepts; I am applying the knowledge in different ways and forming interdisciplinary connections. This has certainly developed my new zest for learning and knowledge.

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Posted in Contemporary Philosophy, Education, Experience, Knowledge

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Experiencing Through Education, Not Vice Versa

Posted on March 23, 2015 by | 2 comments

In “Educating and Experience,” John Dewey makes the distinction between the two title words in an attempt to convey how every experience itself does not necessarily lead to education, or at least not in a positive and productive manner. In the text he says, “the belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative. Experience and education cannot be directly equated to each other”(13). Although I do see some truths to these statements, I do also disagree with some of it as well.

For instance, I take particular interest in the statement “Experience and education cannot be directly equated to each other”(13). I would argue against this statement in a similar way to the square-rectangle concept where every square is a rectangle but not every rectangle is a square. I think that education equates directly to experience but not vice versa. Education should be seen as an experience in its own right whether or not the pupil regards it as such. It’s no new discovery that power of education is invigorating and provides students with plenty of experience.

However, I do agree with Dewey in terms of experiences not necessarily being educative(13). Experiences can be life altering and very educative. For example, people on shows like “Survivor” and “Naked and Afraid” learn through experience as they try to accommodate living in the wilderness. But a counterexample would be of a typical college student attending a party. Granted, the results from experience may vary, but I highly doubt that this kind of activity would result in any type of educative enlightening. What do you guys think? Do you think that education and experience do equate to each other?

 

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Posted in Education, Experience, Knowledge

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Experience This

Posted on March 22, 2015 by | 1 comment

In the reading we were assigned for Monday, John Dewey put a lot of emphasis on the importance of experience in education. His connection between personal experience and education remind me of my first blog post, “To Practice or To Preach?”

Continue reading →

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Posted in Contemporary Philosophy, Education, Experience

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Sticking to Tradition

Posted on March 22, 2015 by | 4 comments

From the start, Dewey’s philosophy on education somewhat mirrors Rousseau’s in that they both believe that the key to learning is experience. We have discussed in class how this approach differs from the way we learn today since we generally associate our current style of learning with what Dewey calls traditional learning style. The traditional learning style tells students information instead of letting them figure it out for themselves. I believe, however, that educators recognize the need for hands-on learning and incorporate it into the current methods of teaching.

A great example of this is labs. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education, Enlightenment-Era Philosophy

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Rousseau and Dewey on Education

Posted on March 21, 2015 by | Leave a comment

While reading Experience and Education, I couldn’t help but notice how Dewey’s discussion of education directly connects to Rousseau’s discussion of raising a child. This comparison first became clear when Dewey began discussing the negative qualities and the consequences of habit formation when he stated, that some “experience[s]” may “generate” “habits,” which he suggests creates the “inability to control future experiences,” a similar stance to Rousseau (26). Continue reading →

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Posted in Contemporary Philosophy, Education, Experience, Identity, Knowledge

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“Why I Hate School But Love Education”

Posted on March 15, 2015 by | Leave a comment

Ever since we began our discussions about education, I’ve been nagged by a memory of a video I’d watched in high school. It was a video my psychology teacher showed us in class one day, not because it was particularly relevant to the topic we were discussing, but because he was one of those teachers who liked to make you think and question your values. The video was a spoken word that differentiated education from schooling. After some descriptive Google searches, I found that it was called “Why I Hate School But Love Education.” Continue reading →

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